No abstract

The shifting nature of international conflict has prompted a rethinking of the Correlates of War Project's classification of wars. This research note describes the new expanded war typology and the resultant three war data sets. Lists of the qualifying wars in the inter-state, extra-state, and intra-state categories during the 1816-1997 period are appended.

This article serves as a companion to the release of Version 3.0 of the Correlates of War Formal Interstate Alliance Dataset, 1816–2000. First released in 1966, the Correlates of War alliance data have greatly influenced quantitative studies of conflict, providing an important variable in the study of international conflict and cooperation. The article begins by describing the historical development and the major characteristics of the alliance dataset. The second section then discusses the procedures used to both identify and code each alliance in this revised and extended version of the data, and this is followed by a description of several important changes made to the original coding rules in order to develop this dataset, with the most notable of these changes being a more determined reliance on treaty texts rather than historical accounts for identification of alliances and alliance types. To show the effects of the revised coding decisions and the enlarged temporal domain, the final section of the article presents summary statistics for the new data and then uses the dataset to revisit two existing studies on democracy and alliance behavior. The findings indicate that jointly democratic dyads are likely to be allied only after 1945; joint democracy is negatively related to alliance formation during the 1816–1944 time period.

Students of world politics disagree about the approaching outlook for war. Are we in the midst of an era of peace with a declining prospect of war, or are we facing a future characterized by increasing “ethnic” conflicts? This puzzle has led scholars to call for a more comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of war. A discussion concerning this need for a new look at war had also arisen within the Correlates of War Project. For more than three decades the Correlates of War Project's database has served the research needs of most of the quantitative world politics community, especially in identifying and trying to account for several classes of war (inter‐state, extra‐systemic, and civil) throughout the international system since 1816. However, a number of the disagreements in the literature concerning the prospects of war derive from the tendency of many researchers to rely on only one of our data sets (e.g., inter‐state war). Here we wish to stimulate a broader view of war by examining the interplay among the three major types of war. Historical developments of the past half‐century, and especially since the end of the Cold War, have rendered the original COW war typology increasingly incomplete. Consequently, we developed a modified typology of war and attempted to format the descriptive variables in ways that would facilitate a more comparative and comprehensive analysis of warfare. While the reader should be reassured that Inter‐state Wars remain as previously defined, we introduce the term “Intra‐state War” in place of our original Civil War category, and the term “Extra‐state War” in place of our initial Extra‐systemic War category, allowing us to reclassify several such wars. This revised typology coupled with an update of the data allows us to take a fresh look at the question whether, from the perspective of the past two centuries, war is in fact becoming less common. The article concludes with a series of analyses that describe the patterns and trends of all types of war––reflecting the new typology––since the Congress of Vienna. These analyses reflect a disquieting constancy in warfare and hint at patterns of interchangeability or substitutability among the types of war.

In 1995, the Gender Research Committee of the International Studies Association conducted a survey of the membership concerning the impact of gender on members' lives. In 2006, the Women's Caucus for International Studies sponsored a follow-up survey utilizing similar questions. A comparison of the findings of the two studies shows increased representation of women within international studies, persistent frustration with the slow pace of progress in women's access to senior positions and in accommodating family issues, some evidence of a chilly climate for women and a leaky pipeline, and significant differences between men's and women's perceptions of the status of women in the profession. The 2006 survey reveals a marked increase in concerns regarding the tension between women's family responsibilities and the academic environment, identification of structural discrimination, and concerns that men have been disadvantaged by affirmative action for women.Years ago women were indeed discriminated against. That's over now and, if anything, men are now discriminated against.-Male survey respondent-2006I think the problems are more deep-seated than just addressing child care or women as child-bearers. The ''tenured white men'' still rule.-Female survey respondent-2006 As women have entered the ranks of the academic profession, attention has been given not only to whether women have access to the profession, but also to whether they are thriving and advancing within it. Clearly, the profession is in Authors' note: Thanks go to Executive Directors of the International Studies Association Ladd Hollist and Tom Volgy for supporting ISA funding and implementation of the 1995 and 2006 surveys, respectively. We are very grateful to Mike Escalante at ISA for administering the 2006 web survey, collecting the data, and summarizing the frequencies. Ó 2009 International Studies AssociationInternational Studies Perspectives (2009) 10, 428-446.